Semyon Tsarapkin, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, was visibly touched when four Harvard students presented him with a gift for the newly-constructed University of Moscow on April 20, 1953.

But what appeared to be a thoughtful peace offering in the midst of the Cold War instead launched the Soviets into the center of a fierce collegiate rivalry with global implications.

The gift, a copper weather vane in the likeness of an ibis, had been stolen just days earlier from atop the castle of The Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine. Editors at The Harvard Crimson, the campus daily and longtime rival of the Lampoon, immediately claimed responsibility for the heist.

“We sent a telegram to the Russian embassy in New York indicating the Lampoon would like to give its ibis for a replacement on the spire of the new University of Moscow as a ‘symbol of the universality of the search for truth,” recalls George S. Abrams ’54, then managing editor of The Crimson.

But the ibis’ journey to New York was temporarily derailed when a small band of Poonsters kidnapped Crimson President Michael Maccoby ’54 as he walked back to his room in Lowell House.

Among the kidnappers, according to Maccoby, was Lampoon President John H. Updike ’54, whom The Crimson had made a habit of pillorying in regular reviews of the magazine. But with the Crimson president now in his custody, Updike firmly demanded the ibis’s return.

“Finally, The Crimson said they would exchange me for the ibis,” Maccoby recalled, “and there was a corner where we were supposed to meet.”

But at the rendezvous, Crimson editors reneged on their side of the deal. With David L. Halberstam ’55 at the wheel, Maccoby jumped into the back of The Crimson’s getaway car, which promptly departed for New York.

(Although Maccoby stands by his story, some accounts of his kidnapping and subsequent escape are inconsistent. “Michael has always claimed he was kidnapped,” said Abrams. “Some of us were uncertain about that, but we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.”)

Arriving in New York over the weekend, the editors, joined by photographer John B. Loengard ’56, conceived the next stage of their prank after seeing pictures of the University of Moscow in Life Magazine, according to Abrams.

With Poonsters on their way to New York in pursuit of the ibis, the Crimson editors contacted the Russian embassy and arranged for a private exhange on Monday morning.

Maccoby and Abrams recalled their meeting with Tsarapkin, the deputy ambassador, as cordial and uneventful.

“He asked me about Harvard and whether they taught Marx and Engels,” Maccoby recalled.

The presentation of the gift occurred under a portrait of Vladimir I. Lenin, with Loengard snapping photographs which were quickly disseminated among most major news outlets once word of the prank became public.

Tsarapkin accepted the ibis with the thanks of the students of University of Moscow. Still, the copper bird made for an odd—and awkward—gift.